The weather was great - except when we were racing. Very peculiar to have good breeze before and after the racing but none during - what does it mean?
Stuck between sea and land breeze.
In the morning on both days it was westerly, and in the afternoon on both days it was westerly, with very light NW-SWly in between. Not typical of a sea-breeze gradient breeze situation. Also it was overcast for much of both days too - not typical seabreeze weather. Further, there was no sign of wind anywhere on the estuary, whereas a sea-breeze/gradient breeze (I don't think you mean land breeze - this is the thermal opposite of the sea breeze you get just before dawn as land cools and the sea is warm enough to make thermals - pretty much the province of the tropics. Lord Cochrane daringly used the land breeze to sail some French ships he had just captured out of a caribbean harbour. But I digress) is expected to be less than a mile wide with the wind in opposite directions on each side. Not what we saw.
My explanation for Saturday is as follows: There was a Wly breeze of 6-10 knots when we set out at high tide. It was predominently overcast but with occasional patches of sun. The cloud up above looked like it was raining, but I don't remember any. (I am told that in a fair fraction of rain showers, none of it gets to the ground - it evaporates before it gets there!). Clouds which are raining have air falling out of the bottom and fanning out when the air hits the water, so to leeward (as we were then) there is more wind, and once the cloud is past, there is less. That could have taken the wind down to 5kn, say. Add to that the tide pushing us all downwind at ~1-2knots and you have very little wind. In the middle of race 2 Lucy and I saw another raining cloud travel the length of Sheppey about 2 miles to our south. As it approached we had a bit more wind, but this time from the SW. As it continued past the wind went round nearly to the S. At this point the course was reset by the race officer.....in time for the gradient wind to re-establish itself from just S of West. All of this was on the background of a building ebb tidal stream.
Anyway, my question was more rhetorical.
